Gwendoline Iris James was a Londoner who is became a nurse. In May 1943 she was lodging with the Westrip family at a house in Lower Anchor Street. During the 'Chelmsford Blitz' which occurred that month the house was destroyed by a German bomb and Gwendoline and three members of the Westrip family were killed. Four others died in nearby houses.

Gwendoline was born in Camberwell, London in 1919, the eldest child of Frederick James (1899-1980) and Catherine Emma James (nee Kimber) (1901-1984). Her siblings were Frederick C. James (born in 1921) and Kathleen James (born in 1923).

Her parents had married at St Philip the Apostle, Camberwell on 3rd October 1919 at which point her father was a labourer living at 34 Lovegrove Street in Camberwell; her mother at 6 Lovegrove Street.

By 1943 Gwendoline was lodging at 22 Lower Anchor Street in Chelmsford, home to Sidney Westrip and Cissie Westrip. She is thought to have been working as a nurse. The property was an old terraced house on the road’s northern side between The Orange Tree and The Queen’s Head pubs. In the early hours of 14th May that year Chelmsford experienced what was to prove to be its heaviest air raid of the war. In a sharp attack that lasted for just over an hour, the German air force, the Luftwaffe, dropped a large number of high explosive, incendiaries and parachute landmines which caused extensive damage to residential, commercial and industrial properties in the town, and led to the deaths of more than 50 people.